RZ/G2L, RZ/G2LC, RZ/G2UL SMARC Board by Renesas

 This page is for the RZ/G2L, RZ/G2LC, and RZ/G2UL evaluation boards.

• Official Renesas RZ/G2L Device Website (link)

• Official RZ/G2L Evaluation Board Kit Website (link)

• Easy Download Guide for RZ/G2L and RZ/G2LC (link) - A single PDF file that lists all the available downloads on renesas.com.

• RZ/G2L Evaluation Kit Ordering Part Number: RTK9744L23S01000BE

RZ/G2LC

• Official Renesas RZ/G2LC Device Website (link)

• Official RZ/G2LC Evaluation Board Kit Website

• Easy Download Guide for RZ/G2L and RZ/G2LC (link) - A single PDF file that lists all the available downloads on renesas.com.

• RZ/G2LC Evaluation Kit Ordering Part Number: RTK9744C22S01000BE

RZ/G2UL

• Official Renesas RZ/G2UL Device Website (link)

• Official RZ/G2UL Evaluation Board Kit Website (link)

• Easy Download Guide for RZ/G2UL (link) - A single PDF file that lists all the available downloads on renesas.com.

• RZ/G2UL Evaluation Kit Ordering Part Number: RTK9744U11S01000BE

• Pin compatible with RZ/A3UL and RZ/Five

• Device part numbers:

  • R9A07G043U11GBG (without security)

  • R9A07G043U15GBG (with security)

Articles

• Renesas adds to RZ/G2 line with three Cortex-A55 SoCs

 📄 Board User Manual

• The User Manual for the boards can be found their website pages on renesas.com.

• Check the 'General Information' section on this page for the links.

• A Micro USB cable for serial console.

• Power: (Required) USB Type-C power supply. 5V or 9V can be used. To use 9V, switch SW11-4 change is needed (please see the board manual).

• HDMI LCD: An LCD monitor with an HMDI input. Here is a list of tested touchscreen monitors: RZ-G/RZ-G2L_SMARC#LCD_Monitors

• mini-HDMI Adapter: The connector on the board is type mini-HDMI.

• USB Camera: A camera supporting USB Video Class (UVC) such as Logitech C270, C920, C922, BRIO Ultra HD Pro.

• USB Mouse: In the case that you do not have a touchscreen LCD monitor.

• If you prefer to program pre-built binaries into your board, you can download them from renesas.com

• The package includes a complete SD Card image that can be written using Windows or Linux.

• Boot loaders are also included in the package.

• On the RZ/G Verified Linux Package [5.10-CIP] BSP download page, look for "Pre-built Images" downloads for RZ/G2L, RZ/G2LC, RZ/G2UL.

  • For a Windows PC, use 7-Zip to extract/convert the .wic file ( core-image-qt-smarc-rzg2l.wic.gz → core-image-qt-smarc-rzg2l.wic )

  • 💡 Use Balena Etcher to program the .wic file into and SD Card. The card needs to be 4GB or larger.

  • Insert the SD card into the socket on Carrier Board.

• ┌─────┬─────┬─────┐ │ │ SOM │ │ │ └─────┘ │ │ Carrier Board │ │ ┌─┐ │ └─────┴─┴─────────┘ ↑ SD Card So

• For RZ/G2L, RZ/G2L, RZ/G2UL
  
  

• The Renesas RZ/G HMI SDK is an all-in-one package that includes the necessary software (toolchain) for developing a Linux HMI application. The HMI SDK provides a quick and easy development environment, lowering the barrier to entry for beginners to Linux to use a Linux MPU.

• Contains demonstrations and examples for LVGL, GStreamer, Chromium

• 👉 https://renesas-rz.github.io/rzg_hmi_sdk/latest/

• To build the BSP, you will need a Linux PC running Ubuntu 20.04. This was the only host OS that was tested and that specific version is a requirement of Yocto 3.1 (dunfell). Using Ubuntu 22.04 will not work.

• You can use a Linux PC (recommended) or a Virtual Machine. If using a Virtual Machine, 200GB of hard drive space is recommended for the minimum build.

• If you are not currently running Ubuntu 20.04, you can use a docker container.

  • Example: Host Machine = Ubuntu 22.04 + Docker Container running Ubuntu 20.04 inside of it.

• Some setup instructions and scripts are provided to make it easy to get started.

  • https://github.com/renesas-rz/docker_setup

• Download the RZ/G2L Board Support Package from renesas.com. Links to all the downloads can be found on the 📦 RZ/G2 Linux BSP on this site. Please refer to the sections that support RZ/G2L.

• You will need to downloaded multiple packages for the full build. You will need to download the "RZ/G2L Mali Graphic Library" package to enable graphics and "RZ/G2L Codec Library" package to enable video encode/decode.

• Build Instructions: The instructions for building the BSP are located in the Release Note document that is included in the ZIP file download from renesas.com.

• Board Versions: There are currently 3 versions of RZ/G2L boards (WS1-Discrete, WS2-Discrete, WS2-PMIC). Please review section Board Version Identification above. There is only 1 version of RZ/G2LC board. There is only 1 version of RZ/G2UL board. If you have a RZ/G2L 'WS1' board (very rare), please review section 6 in the 'Release Note' of the BSP in detail before following the instructions in section 3.

• Graphics Libraries: If you are building core-image-weston or core-image-qt, you need to add Mali Graphics library mentioned above. Note that RZ/GUL and RZ/Five do not have a GPU, so there are no graphic libraries to download and build. However, you can still run build and run Weston and Qt without a GPU if you set "use-pixman=true" in the weston.ini file on your board.

• Enable Qt Demos: To build the Qt demos (core-image-qt) you must edit the file build/conf/local.conf and remove the comment marker # to set QT_DEMO = "1" . Please build (bitbake) core-image-weston first, then bitbake core-image-qt. If you buid core-image-qt first, you will get an error. Also, if you get a build error, just keep running the bitbake command again until it completes (there seems to be some issue in the order that packages build).

• Hint: To make the build faster, you can copy the downloads directory from an older BSP (rzg2l_bsp_vx.xx.0/build/downloads -> rzg2l_bsp_vx.xx.1/build/downloads) to skip downloading the same open source packages again.

• The instructions for setting up and programming the board are located in the Board Start-up Guide that comes in the BSP download package

• A script for automating the programming the boot loaders into Flash can be found here: https://github.com/renesas-rz/rz_flash_writer_tool

These instructions are for using the output files from the Yocto build to prepare an SD Card and boot into Linux.
The evaluation boards boot from SPI Flash (boot loaders), then can run Linux from either eMMC on the board or an external SD Card.

• The SD Card must be formatted by a Linux PC, and contain 2 partitions:

  • Partition 1 = FAT16

  • Partition 2 = ext4

• A helpful script has been created (usb_sd_partition) that you can run on your Linux PC.

  • Insert your micro SD card into a USB-SD-Card reader and then plug into a Linux PC.

  • Use the commands below to download the formatting script from github and run. Please select your card and choose the default settings.

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/renesas-rz/rzg2_bsp_scripts/master/usb_sd_partition/usb_sd_partition.sh $ chmod +x usb_sd_partition.sh $ ./usb_sd_partition.sh

• Use the commands below to copy the files you build with the BSP to the SD card. Start in the base of your Yocto BSP.

• Choose the correct command for RZ/G2L or RZ/G2LC or RZ/G2UL

# Change to the Yocto output directory that contains the files $ cd build/tmp/deploy/images/smarc-rzg2l # RZ/G2L $ cd build/tmp/deploy/images/smarc-rzg2lc # RZ/G2LC $ cd build/tmp/deploy/images/smarc-rzg2ul # RZ/G2UL # Copy the Linux kernel to partition 1 $ sudo cp -v Image-smarc-rzg2l.bin /media/$USER/RZ_FAT # RZ/G2L $ sudo cp -v Image-smarc-rzg2lc.bin /media/$USER/RZ_FAT # RZ/G2LC $ sudo cp -v Image-smarc-rzg2ul.bin /media/$USER/RZ_FAT # RZ/G2UL # Copy the Device Tree to partition 1 $ sudo cp -v Image-r9a07g044l2-smarc.dtb /media/$USER/RZ_FAT # RZ/G2L $ sudo cp -v Image-r9a07g044c2-smarc.dtb /media/$USER/RZ_FAT # RZ/G2LC $ sudo cp -v Image-r9a07g043u11-smarc.dtb /media/$USER/RZ_FAT # RZ/G2UL # Copy and expand the Root File System to partition 2 $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-minimal-smarc-rzg2l.tar.gz -C /media/$USER/RZ_ext # RZ/G2L $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-minimal-smarc-rzg2lc.tar.gz -C /media/$USER/RZ_ext # RZ/G2LC $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-minimal-smarc-rzg2ul.tar.gz -C /media/$USER/RZ_ext # RZ/G2UL (or if using graphics) $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-weston-smarc-rzg2l.tar.gz -C /media/$USER/RZ_ext # RZ/G2L $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-weston-smarc-rzg2lc.tar.gz -C /media/$USER/RZ_ext # RZ/G2LC $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-bsp-smarc-rzg2ul.tar.gz -C /media/$USER/RZ_ext # RZ/G2UL # Make sure all files are finished writing before removing the USB card reader from the PC $ sync

• Safely remove your USB card reader by right clicking on the drive icon (either RZ_FAT or RZ_ext) in Ubuntu and selecting "Eject"

• The SOM board contains a eMMC Flash device and a Micro SD Card socket. On the SOM board, you can only use one or the other because they are both connected to the same peripheral channel on the RZ/G2L.

• ⚠️ u-boot environment variables are always stored in eMMC Flash (not SPI flash). This means if you change switch SW1-2 to ON on the SOM board, you cannot access saved u-boot environments variables and you will always get the message "*** Warning - MMC init failed, using default environment"

• Note that the SD Card slot on the Carrier board will always work regardless of the setting of SW1-2 because it uses a separate peripheral channel on the RZ/G2L.

• On the SOM (CPU) board, there is a little switch (SW1) near the SD card socket.

• Use the Recommended Settings below. It is the default of how the board was shipped.

[Recommended Settings] [Advanced Users Only] SOM board uses eMMC Flash SOM board uses SD Card socket SW1-1 = ON/OFF(JTAG) SW1-1 = ON/OFF(JTAG) SW1-2 = OFF SW1-2 = ON +-----+ +-----+ | ON | | ON | | = | | = = | | = | | | | 1 2 | | 1 2 | +-----+ +-----+

• On the Carrier Board, set switches SW11 as follows because the boot loaders are stored in QSPI Flash.

SW11-1 = OFF SW11-2 = OFF SW11-3 = OFF SW11-4 = ON +---------+ | ON | | = | | = = = | | 1 2 3 4 | +---------+

• Supply power the board using the USB-C connection on the carrier board labeled "Power Input". You will only see 2 green LEDs lit.

• On the carrier board, press and hold the red power button for 2 seconds to turn ON (or OFF) power to the board. The green LED labeled "Carrier PWR On" will be lit when power is on (making a total of 3 green LEDs lit).

• Now that the board is powered and the onboard USB-to-Serial chip is also powered, plug a USB micro cable into the carrier board to the USB connector labeled "SER 3 UART". Use a serial terminal program to interact as you board. With a Linux PC, we recommend using "putty" (connects to /dev/USB0), and with a Windows PC we recommend "TeraTerm" that connects to COMx. The baud rate of the Serial connection is 115200 bps.

• Press the blue reset button, and then "u-boot" will start. Within 3 seconds, press the space bar on your keyboard in order to stop the auto-boot sequence.

• Insert the SD card into the socket on Carrier Board.

┌─────┬─────┬─────┐ │ │ SOM │ │ │ └─────┘ │ │ Carrier Board │ │ ┌─┐ │ └─────┴─┴─────────┘ ↑ SD Card Socket

• Press the blue reset button, and then "u-boot" will start. Within 3 seconds, press the space bar on your keyboard in order to stop the auto-boot sequence.

• At the u-boot prompt ( => ), enter the following commands to boot the board.

• ⚠️ If you get an failure when saving with "saveenv", remove power to the board and try again.

# Create command macros and save them: => setenv sd_boot1 'mmc dev 1 ; fatload mmc 1:1 0x48080000 Image-smarc-rzg2l.bin ; fatload mmc 1:1 0x48000000 /Image-r9a07g044l2-smarc.dtb' => setenv sd_boot2 'setenv bootargs 'root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 rootwait' ; booti 0x48080000 - 0x48000000' => setenv bootcmd 'run sd_boot1 sd_boot2' => saveenv

# Create command macros and save them: => setenv sd_boot1 'mmc dev 1 ; fatload mmc 1:1 0x48080000 Image-smarc-rzg2lc.bin ; fatload mmc 1:1 0x48000000 /Image-r9a07g044c2-smarc.dtb' => setenv sd_boot2 'setenv bootargs 'root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 rootwait' ; booti 0x48080000 - 0x48000000' => setenv bootcmd 'run sd_boot1 sd_boot2' => saveenv

# Create command macros and save them: => setenv sd_boot1 'mmc dev 1 ; fatload mmc 1:1 0x48080000 Image-smarc-rzg2ul.bin ; fatload mmc 1:1 0x48000000 /Image-r9a07g043u11-smarc.dtb' => setenv sd_boot2 'setenv bootargs 'root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 rootwait' ; booti 0x48080000 - 0x48000000' => setenv bootcmd 'run sd_boot1 sd_boot2' => saveenv

Reset the board and it will automatically boot

• The login will be root (no password is needed)

• You can plug in a USB Mouse or USB Touchscreen

 There are currently multiple versions of RZ/G2L boards with different components. (There is only 1 version of RZ/G2LC board). Please make note of what board you have.
Some boards require different software patches to be applied before building.

Open

RZ/G2L Silicon version WS1 vs WS2:

• The WS1 Silicon version has the specific date code "2050KC002" written on top of the device

• The WS2 Silicon version has the text "RZ/G2L" written on top of the device

Discrete Power Design vs New Renesas PMIC Solution:

• The Discrete Power design has the words "Renesas" written in white silk screen on the top edge of the board.

• The PMIC Power design has the words "Renesas" written in white silk screen in the center the board. Also, the PMIC has the words Renesas on the top of the device.

Board Combinations:

Here are the only release of these boards:

• 1st Release: WS1 Silicon + Discrete Power

• 2nd Release: WS2 Silicon + Discrete Power

• 3rd Release: WS2 Silicon + PMIC Power

Power Button on PMIC Boards:

• On the PMIC boards, please press and hold the red power button for 2 seconds to turn ON and OFF.

• If the "Carrier PWR On" LED does not turn green, please try again and hold the button longer.

🔧 General Sample Code

• https://github.com/renesas-rz/rzg2l_smarc_sample_code

  • GPIO examples

  • Camera examples

📷 Camera Image Overlay Demos

• https://github.com/renesas-rz/demo-camera-image-overlay

• Capture camera images to memory, then use Hardware (OpenGL) to overlay images/text and then do h.264 encoding

📷 Camera Data Receive Unit (CRU) Sample Application

• https://github.com/renesas-rz/rz_cru_sample_code

• This sample application demonstrates using CRU functions for various image processing tasks like demosaicing raw camera data, color correction, and some simple camera functions.

🎥 🔉 GStreamer Application Note

• RZ/G2L Group and RZ/V2L Group Linux Interface Specification GStreamer User's Manual

• This User's Manual (Application Note) explains GStreamer and the custom plug-ins created by Renesas.

• Usage examples are also included.

💾 RZ/G HMI SDK

• Pre-built image for RZ/G2L SMARC board. 👉 No need to build the BSP from source using Yocto

• Provides Toolchain installer for building user applications.

• Sample application source code is provided.

• https://renesas-rz.github.io/rzg_hmi_sdk/latest/

Open

 RZ/G2L Evaluation Board Kit Configuration

Open

 How to set Boot Modes

Open

Power ON



● Connect USB-PD Power Charger to USB Type-C Connector. Then LED1(VBUS PWR On) and LED3(Module PWR On) lights up.



● Press SW9 to turn on the power. Then LED4(Carrier PWR On) lights up.

The following HDMI LCD screens were tested with this board.